Parallels
by brainandheart
Summary: When it comes down to it, he can't be anywhere but beside her.


**Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's probably not mine.**

* * *

Jemma comes to him in the middle of the night, pounding on his door. He pulls himself out of bed, wondering what on earth she could want at this hour; because he knows it could only be her. For just a second, as he swings the door open, he's annoyed, but as soon as he catches sight of the devastation written across her face, all irritation flees.

He tugs her out of the hallway and into his dormitory, not wanting any of the light-sleeping agents-in-training on their floor to see her like this. She follows, stumbling into him a little, and a sour, unpleasant weight settles in his stomach. _What's happened?_

He shepherds her towards the bed, the only place to sit in the Spartan room. As she sinks down to sit on the rumpled sheets, he scrambles for the bedside lamp, his mind tumbling down terrifying paths.

The lamp flickers on, and he carefully sits beside her, stealing a look out of the corner of his eye. She doesn't seem to have noticed him at all. Her face is blank, but he can see her hands shake where they rest in her lap. He's more than shocked, because in the just a little bit longer than two years he's known her, he's rarely seen her cheerfulness crack. The weight in his stomach intensifies.

He swallows. "Jemma…?"

She opens her mouth, but no words appear. He nudges just a bit closer, pressing his arm against hers. It's all he can think to do, and it seems to help. She straightens and takes a deep breath.

"My parents called." She clears her throat, her voice almost normal, but he can hear the tremble threading through it. "My grandfather has passed away."

His heart sinks. He knows how close she is—_was_—to him. "Jem—"

But her admission seems to have broken something inside her, and tears are falling thick and fast. Her whole body is shaking now, and before he can think too hard about it, his arms are around her. For the briefest moment he worries that it wasn't the right thing to do, but immediately she leans into him, pressing her face against his shoulder.

She's not sobbing; in fact, the only noise she makes is a quiet sniffle every so often, but the tears continue to soak his shirt.

He doesn't move—is a little _afraid_ to move, if he's honest—for what feels like hours. Eventually she stops shaking, and he almost thinks she's fallen asleep. She shifts and sighs, sending a wave of warm air across his neck. He shivers involuntarily. There's a mess of tangled emotions in his chest, and he does not feel at all equipped to analyze them.

When she finally looks up at him and asks, with a catch in her voice, if he will go back home with her and attend the funeral, he agrees without hesitation.

* * *

And so, the first time he meets his best friend's parents, it's not under the best of circumstances.

He worries that her parents will think he's intruding, that he shouldn't be there in their time of mourning. To their absolute credit, they're as gracious as they possibly could be. Mr. Simmons shakes his hand firmly, though his eyes are distant. Red-eyed Mrs. Simmons even hugs him and gives a little smile, saying, "Jemma has told us so much about you, Leo."

He can't help a bit of a smile himself, not just because Jemma has talked about him, but also because it's been awhile since he's seen his own mother and it just feels nice. They go inside, and he notices right away that her family home is much like her, tidy but welcoming.

They put him up in the guest room, and the first evening he keeps mostly to himself. He wants to let her grieve with her family. However, it appears he is wrong as to what she needs, because before three hours have passed, she finds him. Halting at first, then tumbling out of her like a rushing stream she talks to him, tells him about her grandfather and her childhood, and he listens. Maybe it's wrong, but he's glad to hear her rapid-fire rambling. It's the first time she's seemed like herself. They don't sleep that night, but even though she has dark circles under her eyes she looks refreshed, somehow.

The next day is the funeral. The suit he borrows from Mr. Simmons bunches around his short, scrawny frame, but he tries to look as presentable as possible. Jemma stands very straight, shoulders back. As far as he knows she hasn't cried a single tear since that first horrible night, but she is quieter than usual and he can see hints of tension in the lines around her mouth. He stands shoulder to shoulder with her and something at the back of his mind tells him this is significant.

The rest of their stay is a blur of condolences and distant relatives and food. Throughout it all, he simply sticks close to her, probably looking a bit like a lost puppy, but if there's anything he's learned from this, it's that just being there is the best comfort.

All too soon there's only an hour left before they have to leave for the airport. She's talking with her mother in the kitchen while he sits in the other room, watching her covertly under the guise of reading an engineering journal he brought with him. He knows he's been hovering like a mother hen, but he can't help it when she's just starting to act like herself again. Out of the corner of his eye he sees someone enter the room and when he looks up to find Jemma's father watching him watch her, eyebrow quirked and arms folded, he realizes he's not nearly as covert as he thinks.

He opens his mouth, to say what exactly he doesn't know, but before he can speak, Mr. Simmons nods in the direction of the kitchen. "She's quite something, isn't she?"

He's already nodding before he realizes what he's doing, and he catches sight of the amused and knowing look on the older man's face.

Despite the fact that he and Jemma are just friends, he feels his cheeks warm. Does her father think…? It's true that he's aware that Jemma is very pretty, but after two years of constant interaction and friendship it has become as a scientific fact to him, something that he knows but doesn't often dwell on. He clears his throat. "Je—Simmons and I, we're not together."

Mr. Simmons says nothing, watching him skeptically.

"She, uh, she has a boyfriend, back in New York." Even as he says it he knows how weak it sounds, especially since he has not given a single thought to the man and doesn't even know if Jemma so much as spoke to him before they left.

Mr. Simmons notices his lack of conviction, and simply replies, "You're the one who's here for her, aren't you?"

He probably has a hundred logical rebuttals to that, such as, _they've only been dating for a little over a month, surely that's too short a time to involve him in family grief_, but instead his mind has clamped onto the one thing that he didn't even think about four days earlier. When she was hurting, when she needed comfort, she didn't seek out her Agent Handsome McManly. Instead, she chose _him_. She chose her best friend over her boyfriend. He is inordinately pleased by this.

He is abruptly torn from his thoughts when she leans on the back of the sofa, peering over his shoulder. Snapping the ignored journal closed, he hurriedly stands. "Are you all packed, then?"

"Yes, my bags are all by the door. Fitz?" She pauses, and he meets her brown gaze. "Thank you." She smiles then, the first full, true smile he's seen in days.

Warmth instantly spreads through his chest at her words, but even more at her smile, and a strange mix of embarrassment and pride fills him. Returning the smile, he mumbles, "Of course," and hopes that she understands.

* * *

Six years later he's there again, at what is the worst moment of her life, or at least the most desperate one. At the moment which almost ends her life. When she takes him out of the equation, makes the choice for him, and he sees her vanish from the edge of the cargo bay, he's never known such absolute terror, not when he experienced being shot at for the first time and not when there was a scalpel at his throat. It's a terror that makes him disregard his own life in an attempt to save hers.

Later, when she is safe and the Bus is quiet, he can still feel the warm press of her lips on his cheek. He thinks about what her father said all those years ago, and it scares him, because again, he chose to be there, wanted to be there. When she is hurting, he can't be anywhere else than right beside her.


End file.
